


The Ice Storm

by RonsGirlFriday



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Divorce, F/M, Heartbreak, Infidelity, Marriage, Minor Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, No Ron Bashing Here, Watch Me Sink My Favorite Ship, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21637492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonsGirlFriday/pseuds/RonsGirlFriday
Summary: The Good Ship gone south. A Dramione from Ron's POV. A Dramione that is not a Dramione at all.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21





	The Ice Storm

**Author's Note:**

> I never write defensive author's notes, but I need to be up front about something:
> 
> R/Hr is my OTP. I discovered the beginnings of this fic I had started writing years ago for a challenge to write a Dramione from Ron's POV or a Dramione where Ron is not a jerk or something like that, and as a personal challenge I decided to finish it. I subverted the prompt because I can't write the Dramione itself in earnest. I find it utterly implausible.
> 
> I actually hate the premise of this fic and regularly think about burning it down and deleting. I haven't yet because I am fond of the narrative itself and the Ron characterization. The actual writing, I am happy with. And I'm glad I challenged myself. The premise is fucked up. There's infidelity, which nobody likes. Let me be clear, what you're going to read in this story is something I don't think Hermione would actually do. Just like I don't think Dramione is a thing that would ever actually happen.
> 
> This fic is almost more of a commentary on/ answer to the idea of Dramione itself. It is, almost literally, Ron reacting to the idea of Dramione, or more generally the experience of being rejected by Hermione (but doing so within the fic; there's no breaking of the fourth wall). It's me turning the "Ron is always the fuck-up/cheater/etc" trope on its head. 
> 
> It's also not intended to be Hermione bashing. I like Hermione. I don't like the weird, borderline Mary Sue pedestal the fandom places her on. Dramione being the unrealistic thing that it is, already we have a premise that involves Hermione doing something I don't think is _her,_ and I'm playing with that idea.
> 
> That being said, as distasteful as infidelity is, I'm not naive and I'm aware that even good people can make horrible, hurtful choices and rationalize those choices in their own minds. Marriage is complicated and it's _hard,_ folks, and that's a fact. When people get unhappy in their marriages but feel trapped (particularly people who, like Hermione, can be pretty spiteful and/or convinced of their own righteousness) they can convince themselves what they're doing is justified, or not harmful, or that they were driven to it, etc.
> 
> Ultimately, you'll find that Draco himself is really not all that important to this fic, aside from the extra misery it causes Ron. It's a story about the death of a marriage, and in the end who the other man is really doesn't matter.

* * *

  


Winter came early that year: blunt, harsh, unconcerned. It would, perhaps, be a white Christmas, but not the sort that vied with visions of sugar plums in children’s dreams; the snow fell in shards and laid slick upon the ground before cracking and giving way to dismal puddles.

Ron scooped up a handful of icy snow disapprovingly. The kids would certainly be disappointed when they returned home for the holidays – but hopefully they would enjoy more frivolous weather during the last few weeks at school.

He had never cared for such bleak weather. He hated the numbness that overtook his body in frigid temperatures. He didn’t find winter invigorating or charming; he found it debilitating.

Inside his home, however, was painted a different picture: a fire crackled happily, its light reflecting off the bright colors and soft, comfortable surfaces that could be found in every room of the house…large, nurturing chairs; well-worn carpets; and a veritable explosion of knitted and stitched blankets in every size, shape, and hue.

At first, he hadn’t understood the need for so many blankets – really, wasn’t it only necessary to have three? – and he found it rather silly, though he didn’t complain to his mother whenever she gave them a new one, because he suspected she was simply bored with no children in her house. It was the new iteration of the Christmas jumper.

But over the years, he had come to realize the importance of such things – for example, when Hermione fell asleep on the sofa while reading or doing work, or when Hugo needed to build a “castle” to escape from Rose. Those were the times when it seemed entirely reasonable to have fifty thousand quilts and afghans tucked away around the house.

Their house, like those blankets, was modest, imperfect, even unsophisticated – about what one would expect for the salaries of a Ministry employee and a bloke who worked in a joke shop – but also warm and lived-in and comforting. There was love there, and contentment, and it was years since Ron had felt like the things in his life were second-rate. Those feelings were a vague memory; the choleric redheaded boy had become a man who, though his temper occasionally flared in its characteristic manner, now experienced a more sanguine sort of passion, a quieter flame – for his wife, whom he suspected had known his mind like the back of her own hand since they were barely of age; for his children, who were distinctly Granger in appearance and wit but undeniably Weasley in their zeal for life. He even liked the stupid cat.

As Harry had once suggested after a few drinks, Ron Weasley had become downright cuddly.

He’d protested when Harry said it, but it was true. Skeptical as the former Auror could often be, Ron had, in fact, let his guard down in ways he’d never thought possible. Happy-go-lucky, no. Happy, most definitely – a far cry from the boy who was quick to find hostility in every pair of eyes.

Perhaps that was why he’d taken it for granted that she felt the same way…that she felt the same contentment, that the warm glow of their home was enough to sustain her.

She still said, “I love you,” though when she spoke flatly he shrugged it off as a mind preoccupied with work. She still smiled, though when it was small and fleeting he assumed it was simple weariness. Even considering his rare moments of irrational jealousy, he’d never had any true reason to doubt.

They had even started arguing less often, which he supposed was a good thing, though he would never tell anyone that a part of him missed the bickering. In a strange way, it suited them, and he missed it the most whenever she spoke in lively tones about whatever new committee she had created for the purpose of securing rights for trolls and house elves. In those moments, when her eyes glinted and her cheeks flushed and her frizzy curls quivered ferociously, she was unapologetically Hermione.

But that day, inside their perfectly imperfect home, protected from the early winter’s sorry excuse for snow, he encountered a different Hermione – one whose eyes were dull, even while they threatened tears; one whose complexion was flat, despite the pink tinge flirting across it; one whose hair hung lifelessly, though she bristled with anxiety.

She spoke in a voice that was clearly meant to sound composed and measured and reasonable; but something – he couldn’t put his finger on what, exactly – wavered beneath the surface, peeking through the cracks in what was meant to be a stoic demeanor. Whether this façade was intended for his benefit or for hers, he could not know.

She told him she didn’t want to lie to him anymore – that she felt awful about it and had to come clean.

He expected to feel rage, but it didn’t come. He stood petrified, while on the inside he broke and crumbled. Fear, his oldest friend, dropped in to visit, and along with it came panic.

It was, of course, a strange hallucination – that, or someone had set him up for a very twisted joke, indeed. Those were the only explanations his frantic mind could entertain. It was inconceivable that this was actually happening.

It would be alright, he determined in that moment, if she would just take it back, tell him that it was all a bad joke…but she didn’t. She just stared at him with eyes that seemed to look right past him while at the same time not even reaching him to begin with.

Silence stretched between them, an unsteady sea upon which floated her unwelcome truth. She didn’t take it back; she merely stood there, unmoving, and he, unblinking, until the truth crashed headlong into him and jarred him to his senses. An involuntary shudder ran through him.

“How long?” he asked in a feeble voice, leaning one arm against the wall for support. She was sat on the sofa across the room from him, stiff, her hands clenching uneasily in little fists atop her knees. Though Ron could have crossed the little sitting room in about three strides, she suddenly seemed too far to reach.

“I’m not really sure you want to know,” she whispered, and she sounded as far away as she felt.

Bile rose in his throat. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, either. So he changed tactics.

Against his better judgment, he asked the million Galleon question.

“Who is it?”

“I – I don’t think…”

_“Who is it?”_

She was taking far too long to answer such a simple question. Panic exploded in his chest. If she said Harry, he was going to throw himself off a cliff – no doubt about it.

He asked again and again until she told him; the name jolted him to life, and his face grew hot even as his stomach was plunged into ice. It made his skin crawl.

“That’s a really sick joke,” he spat angrily.

“I’m not joking,” she replied in a small voice. “You asked.”

He shook his head frantically. It was impossible, even more preposterous than if she had suggested the sun rose in the west and set in the east.

Like a man bargaining with death, he tried to reason with the unreasonable, make sense of the senseless.

“That’s not – that doesn’t make any sense, Hermione! How... _Why?_ ”

“Please don’t ask me to explain it.”

“Are you off your goddamned trolley? Have you… have you completely forgotten? He – he treated you – ”

“Things have changed.”

“Well, that’s obvious enough,” he responded in a biting voice.

She rose from her seat then, a gesture he recognized all too well as a renewed, conscious effort at assertiveness when she felt she was being too weak. “You don’t have to speak to me in that manner, Ron. I’m being honest with you, so I wish you wouldn’t behave like this.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll go shake his hand and congratulate him.”

Then she was silent, and so was he, and they stood there for an eternity, an invisible wall between them, him with his hands in his pockets, staring hard at her as she refused to meet his eyes. He found himself awkward and uncomfortable in his own skin, once again the cynical boy who knew, deep down in his heart, that he could never keep the girl – that, perhaps, she’d never been his to begin with.

Finally, he spoke again, his voice barely above a whisper.

“What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He shook his head in agitation. “Then why – ”

“It…it had nothing to do with you.”

“That is absolute bollocks.”

“I’m sorry.”

He drew a shaky breath before continuing. “Are you going to stop seeing him, then?”

Silence.

“That’s…that’s why you’ve told me this, right? Because it’s over now?”

Awful silence.

A terrible thought occurred to him then, and he forced himself to ask the question, though he already knew within himself that he wouldn’t like the answer: “Do you…do you still love me?”

“I care for you,” was all she said, and he took it like a Stunning Spell to the face.

A part of him wished he could summon some anger, but he was presently too weak to manage more than a desperate, “What does that mean? Hermione?” He forced himself to cross the invisible boundary between them, ducking his head in an attempt to get her to meet his eyes. She didn’t. “What does that mean?”

“Let’s just...get through the holidays with the kids first. Please.”

He spent the rest of the day in front of the fire. He stared into its depths without actually seeing; he held out his hand towards the flame but couldn’t feel the heat caressing his skin.

  


* * *

Her words echoed in his ears over the following weeks.

_Things have changed._

He hadn’t seen it; he hadn’t sensed it. If there had been signs, they had been utterly lost on him.

One thing had not changed – or, rather, one person. Of this, Ron was certain. For he had seen that man occasionally over the years, and it was evident – indeed, it had been evident from the time they were boys – that he was fixed and immovable, as though he had been painstakingly chiseled out of stone.

He was a man whose features held no heat, no fire, no passion. A man who wore a mask of cool disdain for everything vital. A man cloaked perpetually in ice.

Everything about him lacked vibrancy and luster. He was blank; coldly aristocratic. Where Ron was a shock of color, this man was an unpainted canvas. His eyes were dull and distant.

And grey.

Grey eyes did not go with brown. It wasn’t at all a pleasant effect. It was everything gloomy and lifeless: a thick fog rolling in to blanket the hills and forests.

Brown eyes desired blue, as the earth wanted clear skies and rested with the assurance that, though lightning flashed occasionally across them, the clouds would eventually dissipate and give way to sun. And life would flow from the mingling of brown and blue.

But not from grey.

Try as he might, Ron couldn’t work out exactly when or why Hermione had decided to discard flame in favor of ice. What of her vitality? Her intensity? Who besides Ron knew how to nurture it, challenge it, encourage it?

She wouldn’t tell him anything – the where, the when, the why. She only said she was sorry. She no longer said, “I love you.” She no longer smiled. She worked late – that’s what she told him, anyway – and even when he tried to distract himself with work, he drove himself slowly mad.

There was jealousy, of course, and anger. There was pain and desperation and panic. There was blinding loneliness.

And underneath it all was numb confusion.

  


* * *

_Why him?_ Ron thought miserably as he stood on the platform watching crowds of children pour off of the train for the Christmas holiday. Harry stood next to him, looking puzzled whenever Ron’s eyes flickered towards the blond man standing across the way with his blonde wife.

It still seemed like a horrible joke. Was he really such a bad husband that _this_ was what she had resorted to?

Ron swallowed hard and stared incredulously across the platform. What did she _get_ out of it? That idiot would never love her like Ron did.

“Hey, Dad! _Dad!_ ” An exasperated voice and an impatient tug on his arm snapped him out of his thoughts. His daughter stood before him, fourteen, tall, and awkward.

“Oh, hi, Rosie,” he said absently. “Where’s your brother – oh, there you are, Hugo. Alright…let’s go home, yeah? Harry, do you have your – ”

The fair-haired man turned to escort his family off the platform, and as he did so, his raincloud eyes met the clear blue of Ron’s. Though they remained as aloof as ever, Ron detected a smugness in them that sent his blood boiling through his veins. His heart thumped eagerly within his chest, and it might have actually propelled him forward had his daughter not laid a hand on his arm a second time.

“Dad.”

He expected one of her usual lectures about how he needed to forget old prejudices and stop embarrassing her in front of her friends. But instead she raised her eyebrows and asked, “Are you okay?”

He sighed slowly and placed an arm about her shoulders. “Yeah, pixie. I’m fine.”

As he ushered his children towards the barrier, he glanced once more at the blond man. The man’s mouth twitched, his lips falling just short of his signature sneer.

The message, however, was clear.

There was nothing in this world he couldn’t have.

  


* * *

He supposed he should have told Harry, but he was too ashamed. How could he even begin to admit this failure? It crossed his mind that perhaps she’d already told Harry herself. That maybe Harry knew even before Ron did.

Ginny would never believe it. _Could_ she ever believe it? She and Hermione were still thick as thieves.

His mind darkened. How dare she? How dare she talk to his sister like everything was normal?

Or maybe... maybe Ginny knew, too.

Once again, Ron saw enemies at every turn.

So here he sat, confiding in _Percy_ , of all people. Percy was the only one who could understand. Women were constantly leaving Percy; he was the only Weasley in living memory to have been divorced.

“I just don’t understand _why_ ,” Ron repeated for what must have been the fiftieth time that evening.

“You’ll drive yourself mad asking why,” said Percy, his tone dispassionate and excruciatingly reasonable. “It won’t do you any good.”

“There’s a reason. Hermione doesn’t do anything for no good reason.” Her name grated against his throat like shards of glass, and he felt like he was going to be sick.

“Women do lots of things for no good reason.”

“Yeah, well, let’s not bring _your_ issues into this, okay?” snapped Ron. His brother raised his eyebrows, affronted, and Ron immediately regretted his remark. There was no reason to speak like that to the only person who had the slightest inkling what he was going through.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. He stared into the depths of his drink and wondered if it would be possible to drown himself in it. Maybe if he enlarged it… But then he’d have to increase the amount of liquid if he wanted the plan to work, and could you do that if someone else owned it and you were supposed to pay for it? He couldn’t remember. Hermione would know…

He felt sick again.

“It’s alright,” Percy said quietly. A heavy silence passed between them, unbroken until Percy spoke again. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Why not? Obviously fucked up, didn’t I?”

“You’re so quick to assume you did something wrong.”

Ron scoffed. It was so like Percy to say something like that. Because if Ron hadn’t done anything wrong, then Percy could still feel like _he_ hadn’t done anything wrong in his own marriage. It was so typical of him, to believe himself infallible.

“You’re projecting again,” muttered Ron.

“Pardon?” Percy’s sharp tone told Ron that his brother had heard him quite clearly and knew exactly what he meant.

“Nothing.”

Another pregnant pause.

“All I’m saying is, maybe you’re not the one with the problem. Maybe it’s her who has the problem.”

“Maybe,” Ron allowed, more to avoid further argument than because he actually believed it. He hesitated before he spoke again. What he said next, he didn’t want anybody to know. He would have rather taken it to his grave. But he also couldn’t carry it alone. It was too heavy.

“Did I tell you who it is?”

“No. You haven’t told me much of anything.”

“You have to swear you won’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“No, _really_ …you can’t tell _anyone_.”

“I swear.”

It took Ron five tries before he could get the name out; it nearly choked him in the process.

Percy’s face paled, and he gaped at Ron for what felt like minutes before speaking.

“Fuck.”

Ron let out a hollow laugh. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

“Well,” offered Percy after another long pause, clearly grasping for something helpful to say, “if you need to, you can stay at my place.”

Ron’s head snapped up. “I don’t want to stay at your place. I want to stay with my wife.”

“Fine. But when you need to, you can.” He added with a mutter, “And you’re welcome, by the way.”

In such a fog as he was, it took Ron a moment to fully grasp his brother’s meaning. _When you need to?_ When was he going to need to? He gaped, stunned, until he could form the words to protest: “Wait, I’m not...No. I’m not leaving my house...”

Percy chuckled cynically, his lips poised against his glass. “Yeah, you are. You may not know it yet, but it’ll be you.”

“I’m not leaving my fucking house. _She_ can leave if - ” But he did not want that, either. he felt his face grow ashen and he stared, demoralized, at his brother. Percy seemed to realize he had gone too far and wore a look that could almost be described as apologetic.

So there they sat, looking like the most miserable set of twins in existence. Ron had finally broken down and admitted his need for glasses four years earlier. And with this pathetic parody of male bonding, his brother had become the mirror Ron could no longer avoid.

  


* * *

She hadn’t actually said she was leaving, he realized one day. He wracked his brain, the conversations from the past few weeks rolling in slow motion past his eyes and ears like a Muggle film. It seemed he had not forgotten a single word. He was afraid he never would.

But she hadn’t actually said it...not in so many words. He’d assumed the worst, as he always did.

He could forgive this. Maybe he couldn’t forget, but he could forgive, and that could be enough. He could remind her why she’d chosen him. They could put this behind them, like all the other nightmares, and never look back.

She’d spent more time at home with the kids around, and that was time spent away from... _him_. Ron watched every time Hermione laughed with Rose or ruffled Hugo’s hair, convinced she was finally remembering why they belonged together. Look at what they’d created. Look at this life they’d built.

They could put an end to this, together.

“Where are the kids?” she asked one evening after work, two days before Christmas. The tiny house seemed so much smaller somehow with only the two of them there.

“With Bill.”

“Oh.”

Ron leant against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, chewing on his lip, willing himself not to lose his nerve. He’d missed her, even when she was right next to him. He ached to feel her body against his, under his, to hear her say his name with joy again, but he’d been afraid for weeks to even touch her. Like he was fifteen again, terrified.

She regarded him warily as he crossed the room with his slow, even step. Not breaking eye contact, he took her hand in his, thumb brushing the ring there.

“Ron…”

“Just…wait.”

It demanded every bit of courage he had left, but he took her face in his hands, ducked his head, and kissed her.

She froze for a moment, but then she kissed back.

His heart exploded. She remembered.

When he took her to their bed, he ran his fingers up the backside of her knee and thigh. She actually giggled. Did that wanker know she liked to be touched there? No, of course he didn’t. Only Ron knew.

His hands stopped shaking. She remembered. He could have cried from happiness.

“I love you,” he breathed against her neck, and she froze again in the act of undoing his jeans.

Her eyes were wary again and she disentangled herself from him. She did not remember.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and she almost sounded like she meant it. He watched, paralyzed, as she clutched her shirt in front of her bare chest - like there was something there Ron hadn’t seen every day of his life for nearly twenty years.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and for Ron it was beginning to lose meaning. “I just can’t.”

The rejection could not have been more plain. For the first time in years, Ron was acutely aware how second-rate he was.

  


* * *

“Mum’s being insufferable,” Percy muttered as they shared a game of chess at the Burrow on Christmas Day. The kids were comparing their spoils with their cousins, and Hermione was talking with Angelina and Ginny, acting as if nothing was wrong. “Keeps banging on about why I couldn’t bring the kids. Don’t know how many languages I need to explain it’s Audrey’s turn with them. Concept doesn’t even register with Mum. Check, by the way.”

Ron paid no heed to the beating Percy’s bishop was giving his knight. “Jesus,” he breathed as a new notion slowly sank in.

“Well, you’re hardly paying attention.” Percy gestured to the chessboard.

“Not that.”

“What, then?”

Ron gave Percy a stricken look. “I can’t not have Christmas with my kids.”

“Ron, it’s fine. You do mornings, she does afternoons. Or the other way ‘round.”

“I don’t just want bloody _mornings_ …”

“Fine. Whatever. It’s your move. And pull yourself together unless you want everyone to find out right now, because you look wretched.”

Sometimes Ron believed his brother was an actual psychopath.

At home that night, Hermione fell asleep on the sofa, halfway through a new book she’d received from Ginny that very afternoon. Ron watched her for a full ten minutes, debating whether to wake her and suggest she come to bed. The drowsy fire burned low in the fireplace, just barely strong enough to cast a rosy glow over her cheeks; the color slowly receded as the fire waned by the minute.

Suddenly, she shivered. Her sleeping form curled reflexively into a ball, and she let out a soft sound of discomfort.

Ron took a step forward, hesitating. Doubt washed over him but he pushed it aside when he noticed her tremble again. He grabbed a faded patchwork quilt and draped it over the petite figure on the sofa, taking care to tuck it in around her feet and her shoulders.

He watched her for an immeasurable length of time, not wanting to leave her, but also knowing instinctively that she didn’t want him near. There grew an ache in his chest like a clenched fist.

Unwillingly, he backed out of the room, pausing at the threshold to mumble, “Happy Christmas, Hermione.”

On his way to bed, he paused at Hugo’s door, hearing the faint sounds of a Muggle video game from within. He knocked. “Hugo. Headphones on, mate.”

“Sorry, Dad.” The clamor within disappeared.

“Daddy?”

Ron allowed himself to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment before turning around to face his daughter’s room. She never called him that anymore.

Rose knew something. She had to. She was always too smart for either of them. This entire holiday, she’d watched them both, looking like she was working through a riddle.

She regarded him somberly, hazel eyes burning into his. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Just tired. Been a day hasn’t it?”

She pressed her lips together, distrustful. She looked like Hermione when she made that face. He pulled her into a hug and she squeezed him back, her hands gripping the back of his shirt.

He hated lying to her. He sighed and allowed, “Been a rubbish Christmas, hasn’t it? I’m sorry, pixie.” He pulled back and looked at her face, smiling genuinely at last. He could say _something_ honest, at least. “You’re the best gift I could ever have.” Then, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “Best not tell Hugo, though.”

It worked - sort of. Rose’s mouth turned up in a small smile even while her eyes remained skeptical. She flipped her brown hair behind her shoulder in a lofty way. “He knows,” she joked.

He planted a long kiss atop her head. “Happy Christmas, pixie.”

“Happy Christmas, Dad.” She shut her door, and Ron tried not to think about how awful it would be to tell them. He tried not to consider that he was already beginning to accept there would _be_ something to tell them.

Then he threw himself into bed and crawled under the covers.

It was unbearably cold.

  


* * *

He dreaded the day the kids went back to school. He would miss them, of course; he always did - Hugo with his dimples and easy manner, Rose with her perfectionism and kind heart. He also realized that, unfair as it was to them both, they’d been the last bit of glue forcing this home to hold itself together these past couple of weeks.

And then there was the train station. Ron’s nerves were on fire as he noticed every time his wife’s eyes scanned the platform - searching for whom, he could only surmise. But if she saw her lover, she gave no indication. She hugged both her children to her at once, ruffling Hugo’s hair until he protested, then stood next to her husband with polite detachment until the train had pulled out of sight.

“Home?” she offered dispassionately.

“Home,” he agreed, feeling that the word no longer meant what it once did, and they did not speak again until they were in their little dining room, Ron with his hands braced on the back of a chair and Hermione staring out the window at the slushy snow-covered lane.

“We need to decide how we’re going to handle this.” She didn’t turn to face him until the statement had left her lips.

Ron was not sure how to take this, but he opted for cynicism, and he raised his hand sarcastically, as if in a classroom, ignoring the way she narrowed her eyes at him. “I think not fucking other people is a good place to start.”

“Please be serious - ”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life!” Ron was tired of wallowing and glad of the opportunity to actually _say_ something. “If you’re finally saying you want to fix this - ”

“I don’t,” she said so quietly he had to stare at her until she repeated herself. “I don’t.” She didn’t just hit him with the train; she drove it completely over him.

“I’m beyond fixing this, Ron. I’m sorry… I only meant… Should we keep it together just until the kids are grown?”

Ron recovered just enough to scoff, “That depends.”

“On?”

“How stupid you think your kids are.”

Hermione looked like she’d been slapped. “What a thing to say! Obviously I don’t think they’re stupid!”

“Good, because they’ll see through it soon enough. I’m fairly certain Rose has already worked it out.”

Hermione nodded grudgingly but pressed on. “Could it hurt very much to try?”

Her vacillation was straining the last thread he had left, and he ran one agitated hand through his hair. “For the love of...Hermione...I thought you wanted _out_ …”

“I thought you wanted me to stay.”

“Not if there’s an expiry date on it!” he snapped. “ _Then I declare you bonded until your kids turn seventeen,_ ” he parodied scornfully, “is that how you remember it going? Maybe I was at a different wedding.”

“It isn’t fair of you to guilt me!” Tears crept into her eyes. Finally, some emotion. “I didn’t mean for this to happen and I’ve been honest with you. We’re just...you and I, we’re not...we’re not - ”

“We are!” He fired back, unwilling to hear it. “We always have been! _I'm_ fine. You’re the one throwing it away!”

“If you think we’re fine, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“Well, maybe you haven’t been talking to me!”

“Maybe you haven’t been listening!”

They both fell silent, facing off from opposite sides of the dining table, hands planted on the surface, faces pink, until Ron backed down first, sinking into a chair, hands clasped in front of his mouth.

Hermione sighed and leant back against the wall across from him, eyes closed, lifting her mass of hair up and away from her neck. The air in the room had grown warm and oppressive. At last she spoke, after regaining her composure. “Be honest…didn’t you ever feel like you and I…that it was a bit like trying to force a square peg into a round hole?”

He could lie, of course. That was, he realized, what she wanted – to know that her reasons, however swiftly they eluded him, were entirely valid – that he, too, saw her logic dawning before him, a brilliant and inescapable reality.

She wanted him to see a yawning chasm between them, where previously he had only seen insignificant cracks, easily mended and eagerly traversed with quick strides and open arms.

Yes, he saw it now – a steadily growing canyon, dug deeper by the second as if by a tireless army, while he stood at the edge of the trench, laboring in a fervent but futile attempt to replace the soil with a teaspoon.

But he hadn’t seen it before; for him, it had never existed. And so he couldn’t lie to her and tell her that it had.

He shook his head, his eyes cast down at the tabletop. “No. No, I didn’t.” 

She had no response for that.

He could have sheltered beneath the lie; it might have soothed him as much as it would have her. He might have found comfort in a moment of tepid agreement.

Instead, he stood bravely, exposed, just him and truth against the elements. She could be round or square or whatever shape she desired to be – he would have gladly changed his own shape to suit her fancy. It was important, somehow, that she know this. Even if it didn’t change anything. Ron could not dissemble, not when it came to this.

“You have my answer.” He placed his face in his hands. “I can’t pretend.”

“I can’t make you.”

“Are you never going to tell me why him?”

“It never had anything to do with him. Nor you. It only has to do with me.”

She left two days later, pulling the floor from beneath his feet. And with her – whether knowingly or accidentally or grudgingly, it didn’t matter – with her, she took the fire. The heat ebbed out of the little house, leaving it barren and forsaken. The flame faltered within him, and he felt that he might freeze from the inside out.

And Ron was left to ponder the question: whether the fire had always been a part of him, or whether it had simply begun and ended with her.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Also, in my heart of hearts, Percy/Audrey never sinks. Percy/Audrey is life (you'll know this if you've glanced at my works list). But jaded divorcé Percy was too good to pass up since I was already busy being horrible to my OG favorite Weasley. <3
> 
> Thank you for reading this clusterfuck. You are a masochist for doing so, and I am one for writing it.


End file.
